Exodus 20:3,4,5a Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God,

While counting the Ten Commandments this morning I asked myself, “Isn’t one and two the same thing?” Perhaps if it were not for the issue of one word, graven. The issue being that man would put his hand to stone, wood or metal to form the image. Perhaps you could even include paint.

Now I have had this image in my mind of what my perfect retirement home would look like. It is nestled in a wooded valley with a grand view of the mountains, with a trout filled stream flowing close by the front door. Now grant you, I have not gravened that scene, it appears naturally. Yet all the same it is as much an idol as the graven image if I allowed it to come before God.

I often think about the tree huggers and the animal rights activist that are trying to save the planet. Most of them have no interest in God, only His creation. This is why there is a difference between commandment one and two.

Now before you religious types cry out AMEN, allow me to quote again from Exodus 20:25.

And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.

Don’t be worshipping the alter either.

Genesis 2:15-17a And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But…

Then comes the conditional constraint. As is my habit from time to time I do an examination of first use terms. In my memory I saw this conditional constraint as God’s first use of but and I was wrong.

Genesis 2:5b-6 for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

By virtue of first use, but is not meant to be a conditional constraint but rather a provisional condition. God did not need man to see to the well-being of His creation. God is fully capable of tending to the nature of His creation without the help of man.

Here is the lesson of first use; that I looked to the issues of conditional constraint before I saw the provisional condition.

So often we look to those things which we deem are keeping us from the promises.  Our minds become preoccupied with thoughts of “if only”. Those thoughts take away the vision of what is the provisional condition; God making a way in which He does not need the help of man to care for and provide for His creation.

In the simplest of terms, “Seek first the Kingdom.”

Luke 3:5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;

Provisional condition.